Digital asset management for books

Hi Guys!

I’m working on a book that includes clipart/backgrounds found in my general digital design assets folder.
Not sure if I should make a copy of these assets for the actual book file or just keep them where they are? Using Adobe InDesign, not sure if that makes a difference or not.

Any advice???

I make copies of most assets and put them in the project Work folder. That way if I need to edit the files, I’m altering the copy and not the original. I also create subfolders for inspiration and client supplied files and put those in the project folder. In some cases I’ve got multiple versions of ads or covers and I’ll put them in there too. Everything goes in the Work folder.

Then when the project is done I’ll do File > Package in InDesign and that compiles all the files I actually used on the project and puts them in a new folder, along with a PDF. Long term, I keep the Work folder and the Package folder. Storage is cheap.

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It doesn’t make a difference to InDesign. As long as it knows the path to the files, everything will work fine.

However…

I do the same thing that @Mojo does. Good project management involves keeping everything associated with the project in an organized location.

Sometimes I’ve needed to open a project that’s months or years old, only to find that associated files are missing or the path names have changed. That leaves me searching for things as I try to pull it all back together.

Like Mojo, when I’m finished with an InDesign project, I’ll package it into a self-contained folder. This way, I’m assured that everything is where it’s supposed to be in the future when a client asks me to make modifications.

You’ve got good advice so far.

Pretty much start as you mean to go one.

Do regular saves and make them versioned named etc instead of rolling saves.

Always have backups and save an idml file regularly just in case.

Thanks to all of you for your insight and advice! I truly appreciate it :slight_smile: